Hi guys,

Okay, the big reveal time. . .

Last year, we were contacted by a software company. Their lead design team in Singapore had seen BF Evo and then contacted their UK Licensing office, basically saying 'you _have_ to get these guys working on our stuff!'

The company was Ubisoft, and the design team was working on the Tom Clancey franchise.

You can understand the excitement. There were a lot of big ideas being talked about. There was talk of huge runs of pre-painted models being distributed through games stores, Play.com and Toys R Us. Some ideas were more feasible than others.

We boiled everything down to a hobby games release, which would serve as 'proof of concept'. Basically, if we did a cracking job on the game and miniatures for our current hobby games market, we could then look forward to a more mainstream release (with pre-painteds and everything else). We would have begun with End War, but slowly covered the whole franchise as new versions of games, such as Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon (along with some others not yet announced), were released. Each game would have been compatible with the others, so you if your Rainbow Six teams were getting constantly kicked by the terrorists, you could use Ghost Recon instead. If the terrorists needed help, you could swap them out with frontline Russian units, and so on. There would have been 'macro' rules, similar to the current BF Evo, for large scale games like End War, and 'micro' versions for smaller actions, like Rainbow Six, with more detailed weapon and damage rules. And so on.

We had everything agreed in principle with Ubisoft, and just needed clearence from Tom Clancey's lawyers (you'll remember a sideways mention about a third party). Unfortunately, for various reasons, there were hurdles that could not be cleared.

While we continue to talk to Ubisoft (and others) about various games, what we had hoped and intended for BF Evo will not be happening for the foreseeable future.

So, where do we go from here? Well, we have some ideas, but given the extreme loyalty shown by fans of the game through the most trying of times, we have decided to pretty much hand the choice over to you. You get to decide what happens to the game. These are the current options.

1. We turn the game over to you.
Building on the work of the good people at Evocommand, we make the game public, allowing anyone to write for it. There will be some legal bits and bobs, but nothing too strenuous or binding. Basically, it would allow anyone to post (maybe even PDF publish, it can be discussed) new scenarios, units and armies. Models could be used from any existing model manufacturer.

2. We revise the game.
There are a small number of rules issues that could be resolved with a re-release. However, the main thrust here would be a new setting. We would propose pushing the game's setting a little further into the future, making it 20-30 years ahead, and thus bringing in a lot of new tanks and weapons - existing ones would still be used, but the Abrams would be the equivalent of something like a Chieftain! Rules would be included to use all current tech kit (even models from other manufacturers, giving you access to just about everything available to armies today), but we would also release a new range of models whose technology would be based on the most speculative material today. Real next gen stuff. The models themselves would be a mixture of metal and resin, no pre-paints (sorry, but pre-paints are not going to happen any time soon).

3. We really revise the game.
At least in terms of setting. Looking over computer games such as Ace Combat 6, there is little pretense to make a real world setting, allowing them to mix and match eastern and western equipment to their content. Potentially, we could look at doing something similar, and thus avoid any issues raised by depicting real world combat.

4. Something else.
We are giving you the choice anyway, so if you have a better idea, let's hear it!

Squirrelmaster wrote:I dont trust mongoose further than i could throw them. They come out with way too many games, dont support them and then they die.

Ahtman wrote:That wasn't the problem the Dreamcast had. Sega supported it. EA didn't support it, but that's more akin to 40k failing because GF9 doesn't make templates for it.

Now the Sega Saturn got no support from Sega USA practically.

The models themselves would be a mixture of metal and resin, no pre-paints (sorry, but pre-paints are not going to happen any time soon).

George Spiggott wrote:

The models themselves would be a mixture of metal and resin, no pre-paints (sorry, but pre-paints are not going to happen any time soon).

Are Mongoose pulling out of pre-paints on all their lines?

Tetchy wrote:

George Spiggott wrote:

The models themselves would be a mixture of metal and resin, no pre-paints (sorry, but pre-paints are not going to happen any time soon).

Are Mongoose pulling out of pre-paints on all their lines?

If the BFE ones were the best they could come up with, then here's hoping.

I'm not against prepaints per se, but the price/quality they were offering was just insulting.

Mannahnin wrote:The troopers were pretty good and the regular Warrior bugs were outstanding, IMO.